


With the Moon

by Mottlemoth



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A Fleeting Glimpse of Background Adlock, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Emotional Healing, Ex-lovers to Lovers, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Injured Mycroft, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Sex, Sherlock is Not Good, Werewolf Mycroft, Worried greg, reunited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 07:55:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21158222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mottlemoth/pseuds/Mottlemoth
Summary: For the last few full moons, all of London has lived in fear of The Beast. Is it some kind of animal, escaped from a zoo? Nobody seems to know, but there's no sign of its reign of terror stopping. A shocking discovery at the latest murder scene then turns Greg Lestrade's entire world upside down.Though their relationship fell apart, Mycroft desperately needs Greg's help - and Greg can't bear to turn his ex-lover away.





	With the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> I feel genuinely guilty hitting you all with such a juicy summary for such a short story. This piece is 300,000 words packed into 3000, and if I could conjure six months out of nowhere to write the thing properly and do it justice, believe me I would. Alas, I do not possess that power. I hope this makes a tasty Halloween snack all the same. <3
> 
> My deepest thanks go to Claudia for the original prompts. Thanks also to everyone who enjoyed this enough in its ficlet form to ask for more.

It's a miracle that nobody sees. Greg manages to smuggle Mycroft out through a back entrance, into his car and away from the scene before anyone notices, half-conscious with shock and hardly able to think. The drive to his flat feels like it takes several weeks. 

It's conducted in absolute silence. 

He gets Mycroft up the stairs, shaking, then locks and bolts the door.

Slowly Greg turns to face him. There's blood up Mycroft's arms, blood around his jaw. He's wearing nothing but Greg's winter coat, wrapped tight around his scratched and bruised body.

He gazes at Greg across the tiny lounge they once shared, his expression numb, as white and empty as the moon.

And Greg realises Mycroft's waiting—waiting for his judgement.

He breathes in slowly.

"Were you ever going to tell me?" he asks. His voice strains. "C-Christ. The whole country's talking about this. I spent last month going round zoos, trying to figure out which one's lost a lion they won't admit to. 'The Beast'. And—a-and now I find out—"

Mycroft's face tightens. He pulls Greg's coat closer, struggling to speak. "You would never have believed me."

"How long've you—"

"Since puberty."

"And—and it happens—"

"Every month." Mycroft inhales, shaking. "With the moon. Sherlock, too."

Greg puts his hands over his face. 

"Christ," he whispers into his palms. "Christ, why didn't you tell me this when we were together? Is this why you stood me up every few weeks?"

Mycroft says nothing, looking away across the lounge as he visibly approaches the verge of tears.

"Why now?" Greg demands, shaking. "If you've been like this from puberty, why are you suddenly killing people?"

"I am _ not," _ Mycroft breathes. His eyes flash in the darkness. "Gregory, I'm attempting to put an end to it. Someone has entered my territory. I don't know who she is, or why she's suddenly brought herself to London, but the killings are _ her _responsibility. Sherlock and I have been tracking her since the very first body. Tonight I came across her in the act and did my best to overpower her. She escaped. Before I could flee the building, I heard sirens."

Greg says nothing, his heart pounding. He wants to believe. He wants it so badly it hurts. 

Mycroft watches him across the lounge with aching eyes, more human and nervous than Greg has ever seen him.

"I wanted to tell you," he whispers. "Gregory, I... I wanted to, more than I can possibly—but I knew you would never—"

Greg shuts his eyes. 

He takes several moments to speak. 

"It'll be fine," he manages. "We'll... I don't know, we'll figure something out. Keep this quiet. I'll take care of you, alright? Just please fucking trust me from now on."

Mycroft doesn't move.

"Alright," he whispers at last. His eyes gloss; he swallows back the distress. "Th-thank you, Gregory. Thank you."

Greg's heart twists. 

"Fine," he says, not looking at Mycroft. "Okay... let's just get you into a shower. Then more talking."

*

As daylight wanes on the night of the next full moon, Mycroft starts getting restless. It's been a long and stressful month tracking Irene Adler in her human form. It's been a dark and rainy day. He's pacing the house by five, only stopping for a few minutes at a time to stare nervously out of windows, watching the sun sink toward the horizon. 

"Oi," Greg tries, close to six o'clock, using the soft and reassuring voice that John has told him works better on Sherlock on these nights. "Come sit down a minute, hm? I've made us a brew."

Mycroft barely looks. He tightens his grip on the curtains, still staring out at the sky, and says nothing. 

"You're a bit jangled," Greg adds, with care. 

"I'm well aware," Mycroft snaps.

"Yeah?" Genially, Greg pats the sofa. "Come tell me about it. Let's keep your stress levels down and it'll happen easier."

Mycroft doesn't move. 

Greg withholds a sigh. Mycroft was like this when they were together. Whenever he needed Greg the most, he locked himself up tighter than Fort Knox then blamed Greg for being unable to reach him. Greg had always stubbornly stuck to his guns outside the walls. _ 'If you won't even talk to me, how can I help?' _he'd asked, over and over and over like a broken record, like it would magically make Mycroft able to talk. They'd both made mistakes.

Sadly, tonight, they don't have the luxury of falling back into old nonsense.

With a breath, Greg gets up from the sofa and comes across the room to Mycroft, keeping his steps nice and slow. He puts a hand in the middle of Mycroft's back. 

Mycroft trembles beneath his palm like a drawn bow.

"Hey," Greg murmurs, soft and firm at once. "Okay. That's it. No more window." He begins to steer Mycroft away. "Come on," he says. "Let's get you onto your treadmill, try and burn off some of this—"

Mycroft jerks. He lunges forwards, too fast for Greg to brace. Greg's back hits the wall. Before he can breathe, Mycroft's mouth closes over his own.

Before he knows it, they're in bed.

Greg's weight seems to soothe Mycroft. He calms further when Greg pins him down, panting into a pillow with Greg's teeth in the back of his neck, whining thickly in the pit of his throat with each powerful thrust. His hips arch; he ruts back in hope of more. It's such an animal gesture that Greg can't help but give him it.

He drives Mycroft closer until the whining has edged into restless howls and Mycroft's body shudders hard underneath him. Sweat gleams between his chest and Mycroft's back. The bed is wrecked. The neighbours must think someone's being murdered.

"Breathe, darlin'," Greg gasps in Mycroft's ear, slowing his thrusts. Mycroft keens. He squirms, panting, and juts back his hips. "I know, baby. I know you need it. Just breathe for me a minute, alright?"

Mycroft drops his face into the pillow with a groan. His hands dig into its softness, flexing against Greg's grip. Greg keeps him pinned. He keeps his thrusts long and slow, almost idle, until Mycroft's breath eases to match the rhythm.

Greg lowers his head, stroking his tongue behind Mycroft's ear.

"Is sex helping?" he asks.

Mycroft nods. He swallows weakly. "Please don't stop," comes muffled against the pillow.

Greg's heart aches. _ I wish we never had, _he thinks. "Don't worry, darlin'," he says. "Not until you're ready. Promise."

A slow shudder runs the length of Mycroft's back. He inhales, shifting, and turns his face against the pillow to look up at Greg. 

Their cheeks rub and nuzzle; overwhelmed, Greg closes his eyes.

"I might transform," Mycroft manages, and his voice is barely audible, even this close. "After I... th-the hormones."

_ Christ. _Greg feels his stomach tighten. "S'alright, love," he murmurs, stroking his nose against Mycroft's cheek. "It'll happen when it happens. You just breathe and enjoy for me. Everything's fine."

Another shudder wracks Mycroft's body. He rests his forehead back against the pillow, inhaling. 

"Gregory?" he mumbles.

"Mm?"

Mycroft pauses. He seems to swallow one thing, then quietly choose another. His hips arch. "Harder," he says.

*

Adler realises within seconds that she's walked into a trap. She smashes her way through a window and takes off down the street before Greg can even draw breath to alert the firearms squad. There's a second smash as Mycroft rages after her, a blur of black fur, then the two of them are gone into the darkness.

Greg survives the night one cigarette at a time.

An hour after dawn, Adler and Sherlock are apprehended in their human forms, trying to get her emergency medical treatment at an A&E centre in east London. They're using false names; she's lost most of one arm and nearly half her total blood volume. Sherlock refuses to talk. Even when he's confined to a cell with Greg screaming through the bars at him, and a pale-faced John pleading from Greg's side, he won't tell them if Mycroft's alive. He speaks only to say he doesn't regret his actions. 

Somehow it becomes late afternoon. Greg has teams of people searching every corner of London. None of them have a single fucking thing to tell him.

Darkness starts to fall.

At eight o'clock, Anthea intervenes. She doesn't mince her words. She tells Greg he's losing control. He can't lead an investigation like this. She'll pursue things over the next few hours while he returns to his flat to sleep and eat, to get a shower and restore some of his authority. She comes with him in the car and sees him right to his door, then drives off again with her phone locked tight to her ear.

Alone in his flat, crushed beneath the silence, Greg can't eat. He can't bear the thought of food. He starts making himself a coffee, then realises he can't cope with that either. He decides he'll shower and change his clothes, lie down for a while and have another cigarette, then try again with food. _ Christ, _ he thinks, shaking, crossing his lounge in the dark. _ I can't. I can't eat if you're dead. I can't sleep. I can't think. I can't live if you're dead. I'll just wait for you somehow to stop being dead. _

The handle of his bedroom door feels wet. 

Greg lets go of it and looks down, startled to find blood all over his fingers. He hadn't even seen it, too numb to bother using his eyes in these familiar surroundings. Glancing at the door itself, he realises there's a streak of blood smeared against the frame as if from someone pushing inside. There's blood on the floor, too. It's right there under his feet, dark red drops against his scuffed grey carpet. A trail of it leads all the way from the front door.

Greg opens the door with his heart jammed in his mouth.

Mycroft looks up from the wreckage of the bed.

He's nearly as pale as the sheets. He's used Greg's pyjama shirt as a tourniquet around the worst wound, a deep and jagged bite to his upper arm. The rest have stopped bleeding on their own. He's lost a lot of blood. It's left him disorientated, barely able to make sound other than to cry against Greg's neck, to say that he's sorry and to plead with Greg to check the door is locked. He must have been here all day, half-conscious, unaware of the hours passing. He keeps slurring his words.

Greg gets him into clothes just in time for the ambulance to arrive. He goes with Mycroft, holding tight to his hand and stroking his hair as the road jolts and bumps beneath them. 

"We're safe," he hears himself saying over and over, kissing Mycroft's forehead, promising it. He's so exhausted that it physically hurts to cry. He's too weak to stop, though. His eyes burn. "You're alright. You're safe. You're gonna be fine."

*

The medical staff treat Greg for exhaustion in the chair right beside Mycroft's bed. Nobody quite dares to separate them. By now, Greg's so agitated and wild-looking that there's confusion for a while over which of them is the werewolf, until Anthea arrives to clear the matter up and take charge.

A private room mysteriously becomes available.

By the time they both wake up, it's morning again. They seem to return to consciousness only moments apart. Greg's eyes flicker open, showing him the blurry haze of the single bed in which they've both spent the night. He promised the nurses he would stay in his own; he got into Mycroft's within seconds of them shutting the door.

Nestled within the sheets, his eyes just starting to open, is Mycroft.

He gazes back at Greg, sleepy, his expression beautifully empty. There's clearly no real thought right now—just sleep and calm. Greg knows exactly how that expression feels. He's pretty sure he looks just the same.

He tightens his arm slowly around Mycroft's waist. 

Mycroft nuzzles without a sound into his neck. 

They lay in the quiet for what feels like another hour, awake and simply existing together, letting the rising light wake the room around them. Greg takes to quietly rubbing Mycroft's back beneath the sheets; Mycroft's gentle shivers make him feel safer than anything in the world.

"I want to try again," Mycroft murmurs at last. He presses his cheek to Greg's jaw, shaking. "With what we had. I want to love you. Properly. I don't want you ever to doubt it. I want you to know it like you know your own name."

Greg winds his fingers through the back of Mycroft's hair, unsurprised to find a lump in his throat. 

"I wouldn't've coped," he says. "You know that? If you'd been..." His throat closes; it won't let him say those words. "J-Jesus. No. That's not happening. I'm not living in a world where you're gone."

Mycroft makes a small, tight sound against his jaw. "My condition isn't easy to live with," he says. "I can't pretend it would be the ordinary life you deserve, Gregory. But I will try to—"

"Oi." Greg tightens his arms at once. "Stop," he says. "Stop right there. None of this bollocks. There's one life I want and it's the life I'll have with you."

Mycroft's face turns against his neck; the shaking in his shoulders deepens.

Greg strokes them as they tremble, feeling his heart strain to breaking point. "I don't give a shit about easy and ordinary," he whispers in Mycroft's ear. "Not for even a second. Fuck easy and ordinary. You think life's been easy and ordinary for me since I lost you? No. It's been fucking awful. And it's been hard."

He can feel Mycroft crying, weeping against his neck without a sound.

"So you're not going anywhere," he says, closing his eyes, and he kisses Mycroft's temple. It's not a soft kiss; it's fierce and it's real. It's a kiss which seals the way of things. "Not now you're back to me. We've gone through all this, we've come out the other side, and I only love you more."

Mycroft's voice seems to squeeze through a throat too tight for it to fit. "I-I love you, Gregory—I love you—"

_ God. Fuck, thank god. _"I know, darlin'. I love you, too. To bits and pieces. I always will."

"I'm sorry—"

"What for?" Greg murmurs. "Crying?" He pushes the tip of his nose through Mycroft's hair. "D'you know what I'd have given to see you cry, back when we were first together? Anything, My. Anything in this bloody world. Don't you dare apologise to me for crying."

*

The next month feels like six. It takes its time to pass, guiding them along slow and easy. Each morning waking up at Mycroft's side is a miracle. Greg never leaves him for more than a few hours; Mycroft's people seem to have conjured them both indefinite compassionate leave.

On the weekend of the full moon, they rent a small cottage on a quiet stretch of beach somewhere in Devon. They spend the day itself on a long walk, covering many miles along the coast, then return to the cottage as the light starts to fall.

Though Mycroft's still uneasy, the walk has definitely helped. He even eats a little and drinks some tea, making nervous conversation. When he takes to hovering near the windows, wanting to watch the sky as it darkens over the sea, Greg takes him quietly by the hand. He guides his lover up the stairs.

In their afterglow, Mycroft transforms. 

It's the strangest thing—no rippling flesh, no howling maw, no bulking muscles. One moment he's lying human in Greg's arms, breathing gently and evenly against Greg's chest; the next, with a small noise like a gasp, Mycroft stiffens, stretches and erupts into fur. It spreads from the nape of his neck outwards, too fast to properly track, and it's over within a blink.

Greg finds himself cradling an enormous black wolf, his fingers now buried in its thick folds of fur.

Mycroft stirs, making an uneasy little whine—soft, embarrassed. He shifts backwards and away from Greg, as if he's unallowed the close contact anymore.

Greg smiles. Gently, he pulls Mycroft close again.

"C'mere," he rumbles, stroking his fingers over Mycroft's snout. The deep gold eyes lift to his with reluctance. "Daft bastard... I'm still gonna cuddle you. You might even help warm the bed up for once."

He didn't realise wolves could lift an eyebrow. It turns out they can. Coupled with the derisive snort, it's just so gorgeously Mycroft that Greg grins from ear-to-ear.

"What?" he says. "I get one night a month without your ice-cold feet tucked up against mine. M'gonna enjoy it. Now come back here, please."

With a weary huff, Mycroft slumps down to the mattress. He lets Greg cuddle him close again, stirring as Greg strokes through the fur on his side. 

Greg rumples it fondly in the darkness, slowly, taking his time to feel. 

_ This is you, _ he thinks. _ This is how you are. You were gone, and you came back to me. I won't ever lose you again. _

"I love you," he murmurs, and he feels Mycroft inhale. Mycroft nestles a little closer, letting Greg pull the sheets back over him. "Just as you are, darlin'. Right now, right here, just like this. I love you."

Mycroft's tail twitches against his leg. He snorts, flashing his tongue against the side of Greg's neck, then makes a little whining noise as Greg finds a nice place on his back to scratch.

"There, is it?" Greg smiles, digging his fingers in. "Hm?" Mycroft squirms desperately; his whining increases in pitch. Greg laughs, too happy in this moment not to grin. "Is that _ 'I love you Gregory' _in wolf, by any chance?"

Mycroft nods, mouth open and panting as he wriggles over onto his back. His front paws flop apart. He gazes up at Greg with the utmost hope, his gold eyes round, one ear cocked.

Beaming, Greg rubs his warm black belly until all the pillows have been squirmed off the bed.

_ The End _


End file.
